June Thomas | Slate | 29 November 2012 "I'm a lesbian and I'm never getting married ... Does my discomfort at being considered another woman's wife stem from internalized self-loathing? Maybe, but mostly I'm responding to the essential conservatism of marriage mania" Comments Ken Fraser | Drum | 26 November 2012 Why the ceasefire won't last. "There are too many advantages to be gained from perpetual warfare. Insecurity is gold in politics. Any kind of crisis increases support for incumbent leaders. War is the juiciest crisis of them all" Comments Gary Marcus | New Yorker | 27 November 2012 Google's driverless cars are legal in three states. Proof that we need machines which can make value judgements, not only technical ones. What if there's a choice between hitting an errant schoolbus, and plunging over a ravine? Comments Peter Leeson | Peter Leeson | 26 November 2012 "Human sacrifice is a technology for protecting property rights. It improves property protection by destroying part of sacrificing communities' wealth, which depresses the expected payoff of plundering them". Academic paper (PDF) Comments James Atlas | NYT | 24 November 2012 Reflections on Hurricane Sandy. "Whether in 50 or 100 or 200 years, there's a good chance that New York City will sink beneath the sea. Or the city could move to another island, the way Torcello was moved to Venice, stone by stone" Comments Marianne Lavelle | National Geographic | 16 November 2012 Methane. "Burn natural gas and it warms your house. But let it leak, from fracked wells or the melting Arctic, and it warms the whole planet." Arctic methane could add a lot to global warming. Is there any way of capturing it? Comments John Arquilla | Foreign Policy | 26 November 2012 It wasn't the Russian winter that stopped Napoleon in 1812. It was guerilla warfare. Russians sent bands of Cossacks to harry French columns and supply lines. Classic instance of "swarming": Simultaneous attack from all sides Comments | 
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